Читать книгу Under the Turk in Constantinople: A record of Sir John Finch's Embassy, 1674-1681 онлайн

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Owing its origin to the enterprise of merchants and maintained entirely at their expense, the English Embassy on the Bosphorus existed chiefly for their benefit; the principal part of the Ambassador’s mission being to promote trade and to protect those engaged therein both against the Turks and against each other. Politics, it is true, were not altogether lost sight of. The Ottoman Empire, though past its meridian, still weighed heavily in the “Balance of Europe,” and the Grand Signor’s attitude was an object of no small concern to the rival groups into which Europe was divided. In the abstract, political writers continued to echo, with unction, the admonitions which the celebrated Imperial Ambassador Busbequius had addressed to Christendom a hundred years before. But since no means had yet been devised “to unite our Interests and compose our Dissensions,”ssss1 what were we to do? Obviously, what everybody was doing. When occasion arose, it was part, if only a subsidiary part, of an English envoy’s business to intrigue for the good of his country and try to defeat the intrigues of those wicked foreign diplomats who intrigued for the good of theirs. Thus, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, her representatives had exploited Turkey’s hatred of Spain to some purpose; and again during the Thirty Years’ War the representative of Charles I. made strenuous efforts, not of course to set on the “common enemy of Christendom” against the Emperor directly—that, as he recognised, would have been too great a “scandal”—but to procure the Sultan’s indirect support for the Prince of Transylvania who was fighting the Emperor. During the earlier period of Charles II.’s reign, too, Lord Winchilsea had exerted himself to prevent the establishment of friendly relations between Stambul and Madrid, and both he and his successor Harvey had endeavoured to bring about a cessation of hostilities between Stambul and Venice. The former of these ambassadors, in fact, was very eager to play a great political rôle, urging that, as, with the acquisition of Tangier, English sea-power and possessions were expanding Eastwards, the English envoy should no longer confine himself exclusively to mercantile affairs.ssss1 But Charles had neither funds nor thoughts for such ambitious schemes. So his representative at the Porte had nothing more to do, as regards State affairs, than “to be truly informed of all negotiations and practices in that Court which may disturbe the peace of Christendom in any part of it,”ssss1 and to transmit his information to London: a passive rôle which suited Sir John’s temperament admirably. As his alter ego wrote to Lord Conway: “Your Lordship will say your Brother here will have little to doe in State Affayrs, which my Lord is very true and so much the more is his quiett.”ssss1